Amortizing War - the Mortgage on W.W.1 was just paid off. Canadians will be bled by our Afghan War debts till the end of the 21st C

World War 1 was Bad Luck for millions of Canadian taxpayers, but a Bonanza for those who perpetuate the legacy of wartime spending.
On Remembrance Day I did some shopping at a very busy Superstore in Vancouver. There I counted just two people, one outside and one inside the store wearing a Legion poppy. For the milling crowd it was just a well deserved day off. It's just the way it is. They are entitled, so criticize at your peril. Most Canadians have lost track of WW1, which is really careless, because they're still paying for it.

No, I don't mean Canadian Federal Income Tax, the grab which was imposed as a measure to pay for that bloody war, and retained by the greedy guts who run the national government. There are several very expensive vestiges of World War 1 still being funded by you, the absent minded Canadian taxpayer. Some of that waste is bureaucratic, such as "Veteran's Affairs" the clunky, cranky cheque writing dragon which should have been slain two decades ago. V.A. is now a Tory pet, pampered and petulant enough to fight on until the day when only robot soldiers are in need of its "service".

The recent rebuild of the VIMY MEMORIAL in France cost taxpayers $20 million dollars and served notice that the Feds will maintain the archipelago of war memorials in perpetuity, as well as continue the expensive annual junkets to European battlefields which our military and political brass, along with carefully selected civilians, enjoy no end.

You may have read of the death of John Babcock, the longest surviving Canadian soldier of the Great War. The old soldier lived a long life of quiet dignity, and was 109 years of age when he died in February 2010. Babcock moved to the U.S. in the 1920s but his Canadian citizenship was reinstated in 2008 in preparation for a (aborted) plan to give him a State Funeral in Ottawa. It has not been reported that Mr. Babcock's death does not mark the end the administration of WW1 pensions as his wife and an undisclosed list of other women are still receiving generous WW1 survivorship benefits. It is a costly precedent which pertains not only to enlistees of W.W. 2, Korea and the current War in Afghanistan, but also to Federal police employees. It is an expenditure that must be financed through taxation till the end of the 21st Century.

John Babcock was only fifteen when he Attested in the 146th Bn. C.E.F. The last surviving Canadian soldier of WW1, Private Babcock died at Spokane, Washington in February 2010. By so graciously refusing Ottawa's repeated offer of a State Funeral, Mr. Babcock saved long suffering Canadian taxpayers millions of dollars. He must have been a Republican.

WORLD WAR 1 (1914 - 2010)

In October I planned to comment on the fiscal lesson given to our jaded world by the mighty German government. Berlin had, on behalf of Europe's most productive taxpayers, diligently made the payments on a massive Reparations load imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. At the time I exiled my research notes to a file up in the right corner of my 23" monitor. The Reparations story got me thinking about Canada's war debt from the 20th Century, most of which is hidden from us.

On October 3, 2010 Germany made its 20th and final interest payment, ($94 million dollars), on bonds which were issued at mid-century to refinance outstanding War Reparations demanded of "the Huns" by the Allied Powers in 1919. So as far as Germans are concerned, the once humiliating "War Debt" is paid in full. You can read the details in this article . It is very interesting that the term "Allies" is in vogue again, for the multi-national forces attempting to defeat the Taliban guerrillas in Afghanistan, and that Germany is now one of the "Allies".

We are still punch drunk from the arrogant squandering of $$Billions$$ on the 2010 Winter Olympics, so few Canadians even noticed the October story on German War Reparations. (Nothing less than Ottawa calling in the American FBI to investigate RCMP invoicing for Olympics security, would satisfy me!) Skipping over other wars we are still in debt for, let us ponder the current fiasco in Afghanistan, a "limited" war which has already lasted TWICE as long as the World War in question.

AFGHANISTAN - Canada's Eleventh Province

Canadians have no grasp of just how much our War in Afghanistan has cost them, and how much it will cost over the next 100 years. I am not referring merely to the incredible burden of military expenditure - not limited to heavy transport aircraft, light armoured vehicles and twenty new Main Battle Tanks, but to purchases and institutional costs yet to be disclosed. (The complex shell game of buying, leasing, trading and delivering the Canuck Leopard II tanks from the Dutch and Germans is a story in itself. At least three LEO 2 books are in production.) If we do a rough total of what DND. CIDA and other Federal Agencies have spent or are committed to spending in the future, it is in excess of what we transfer to our Atlantic Provinces.

Why can the President of Afghanistan expect more money out of Ottawa than say, the Premier of Prince Edward Island? Because Ottawa bureaucrats now think in terms of Afghanistan as a dependant territory, a de facto Eleventh Province of Canada. More Afghan men and women are on the Canadian payroll than Ottawa has employees in the Maritime Provinces. We know that if the Afghan National Police managers do not make payroll, the very policemen we trained and equipped will turn on us.

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The biggest secret in Ottawa is that we have already accepted the truth of an Afghan collapse. Washington hasn't, but Ottawa has. In Kandahar morale is high, but all sense of accomplishment is tempered by a grudging reality; When the major Allied expeditionary forces pull out, the Taliban will return to power. And taking our historical cue from the chaotic American evacuation of Saigon in 1975, we have an existing plan and designated managers to coordinate the evacuation to Canada of tens of thousands of Afghan government employees, military, police and civilians, those who have worked most closely with Canadians these past eight years. The total movement of Afghan families to Canada will equal the intake of Vietnamese boat people from camps in Southeast Asia decades ago. So far WIKILEAKS has not turned up the code name for the Ottawa's Afghan evacuation plan, but we can hope that an enterprising journalist will turn over that rock before it becomes a redacted rock.

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Some Afghan-Canadians have already assumed lucrative positions in our Eleventh Province.

WIKILEAKS - is only playing catchup to CRYPTOME and the NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE

Julian Assange is less a "renegade" and more of a Hero than the editorialists will ever admit. Unlike most of those who cultivate celebrity or notoriety, Assange reads books, and literature informs his private thoughts as well as the essential work he does as the Editor-in-Chief of WIKILEAKS. He read Kafka and was ready for arrest and isolation in a London dungeon. He's read Orwell's NINETEEN EIGHTYFOUR and because he also reads history he fears for human destiny. His self-described mission is save us from the daily avalanche of deception which is burying us all. Assange and his cohorts cry out to any who still have ears, guiding us as we struggle and claw our way to blue sky and the promise of pure air.

Julian Assange as Guy Fawkes - this demo was in Madrid. His Spanish supporters did understand the Gunpowder Plot metaphor and the significance of the British Crown throwing an Australian into solitary confinement, while U.S. government prosecutors scramble to concoct excuses for a legal lynching.

Not long before Assange began the controlled release of U.S. State Departments documents in November, he teased an interviewer playfully with the old rhyme "Remember , remember the 5th of November" which refers to Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot. [Read the well written and illustrated account of it HERE. ] Assange knows very well that Fawkes failed 400 years ago. The plotters were crushed by the Crown, and then mocked by generations of pressmen more loyal to Parliament than to their paying readers.

The Crown constantly sought to deny information to the public by controlling media, and that tradition never died out. (CRTC for you and me!) Modern censorship has deep roots. For example, in 1663 Sir Roger L'Estrange became the King's Surveyor of the Press and he relished the work. What he wrote about the riff raff of his own time still applies to you and I. Sir Roger on newspaper publishing: "I think it makes the Multitude too familiar with the actions and counsels of their superiors, too pragmatic and censorious, and gives them not only an itch but a kind of colorable right and license to be meddling with the government." As newspapers disappear, and are replaced by news and information websites, we must decide the level of control and manipulation we will tolerate in our lives. If Julian Assange was a Canadian passport holder the chorus of Opposition MPs and TV network Allstars would rival the din of a pack of lovesick coyotes.

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All of this invites the obvious question - Where are Canada's Info-Anarchists? Do they even exist? We have legions of Winston Smith's in Ottawa "weeding" and "redacting" federal records, but probably not a one who has the gumption to do what U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning did. Not one.

Long before the conception of WIKILEAKS there were plenty of courageous Americans and Europeans willing to web-publish secret government files, some of them won through ATIP research and others delivered by anonymous email. The campus based National Security Archive is a prime example. I've been following NSA since 1994, the year I first surfed the Net on dialup. One of the books NSA published in the 1990s was WHITE HOUSE E-MAIL (1995). It contained the emails of two American Presidents, which are in fact a PUBLIC RECORD. Sadly, we may never read its Canadian equivalent PARLIAMENTARY E-MAIL. (The office emails of a Prime Minister, a Premier and a Mayor, are PUBLIC PROPERTY but who in this country has read any?) John Young's CRYPTOME site in New York also performs heroic service and I am a devoted fan of his excellent work. Young was asked to participate in setting up Wikileaks but his own projects occupy most of his day.

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Of course there are NO CANADIAN WEBSITES offering purloined federal or provincial files. The National Archives of Canada is mandated to decide what is retained for the permanent collection, but the bitter truth is that Ottawa bureaucracy destroys much before the juiciest file groups are perused by archivists. That is one reason Canadian Parliamentarians can make self-serving claims about being vigilant in safeguarding of our democratic system. Their confidence derives from our utter inability to monitor what they get up to. Canada is the only "democracy" which tampers with its citizens private mail, running mail opening operations 24/7. Our "democracy" tolerates the strong arming of Internet Service Providers, requiring them to assist the police by providing surveillance of citizens without a search warrant, and in real time. Our "democracy" requires bank employees, accountants and real estate sales persons to act as a clandestine informant, and rat out any client who offers "suspicious" cash. Muslim terrorism certainly angers Canadians but we don't really fear it. We suppress our anger because government tells us who to like, and punishes the expression of "hate". Actually our greatest fear should be that the American Democracy, its commitment to openness, might degenerate to the level of our own. If that should happen, the so called "Free World" would be doomed.

WHITE HOUSE E-MAIL, a 254 page book compiled by the NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE in 1995, revealed the secrets of two Republican administrations. If a President's personal email is public property, and has been for fifteen years, why should Hilary Clinton's State Department get special treatment?

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The only Canadian secret pertaining to this book is why I had to pay BOLLUM'S BOOKS $21.95 for it in Vancouver, when the cover price in 1995 was $14.95. I'm being facetious of course. We all know why the Canadian dollar was kept artificially low. But hey, making pesky U.S. books unaffordable did keep Pierre Berton and his crack platoon of researchers employed.

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JULIAN ASSANGE - sex charges unique to Sweden, ANNA ARDIN -a character assassin unique to our era, and NAOMI WOLF puts the boots to blonde policemen

Wow, it's so very appropriate that the decade is ending with this whole WIKILEAKS fiasco. For nine years, ever since the 9/11 Attack on New York and Washington, we have witnessed the construction of Fortress America, which has turned every U.S. city into a para-military bastion, and every airport into a neo-Checkpoint Charlie. How appropriate that a stereotypical "90 pound weakling," who's job title is "Editor-in-Chief", should put the Fear of God into the super-secret puppet masters of the world capitals. Well Assange is an Australian, so for all the salacious details of the sex smear, how about letting the Sydney Morning News explain? Guy Rundle's article "DID HE OR DIDN'T HE " is here. If you are as sick as I am of the TV networks hashing the story, you will give Rundle a few minutes of your time.

And what of Mr. Assange's brief bed partner and principle accuser, the political activist and tragi-feminist ANNA ARDIN ? She turns out to be an incredibly complex 21st century mutant, and very likely the prototype character assassin of our era. If there is a Wiki page for her (and I haven't bothered to look) she probably wrote it herself.

Sweden.... the rape capital of the world, has the gall to accuse Julian Assange of ... what? "Sex by surprise"!? Naomi Wolf, in a scathing essay kicks the Swedish legal system in the balls. It's only a five minute read. Treat yourself to some potent prose. It's posted here.

"...I knew this position taken by the male dominated U.S. British and Swedish media was, basically, horseshit. But none of the media outlets hyperventilate now about how this global-manhunt/Bourne-identity-chase-scene-level treatment of a sex crime allegation originating in Sweden must be 'normative' has bothered to do any actual reporting of how rape -- let alone the far more ambiguous charges of Assange's accusers, which are not charges of rape but of a category called 'sex by surprise,' which has no analog elsewhere -- is actually prosecuted in Sweden."

Ten are gunned down in Vancouver, but "There were no innocent people who were struck by bullets." say's Vancouver Deputy Chief

The masthead of the Vancouver SUN newspaper says it all... "Gangs, Weather, Traffic Cams". Ah, the petty preoccupations of life here in "The Best Place on Earth [sic]".

Ten gangsters and guests shot at a birthday part underway at the BEST NEIGHBOURS RESTAURANT in Vancouver. Was it the ultimate payback or just a warning salvo? Hard to say, but when a man opens fire with an assault rifle and nobody is killed, but ten are wounded, it seems to indicate that the gunman was pulling some of his shots. Still, all of the wounded have buddies or boyfriends, so this is certainly has great potential for an escalation in violence. (Warning **to Vancouver municipal taxpayers - the boys in blue will be running the ass off of the VPD overtime clock this Holiday Season.)

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The recovered Kalashnikov rifle used in the restaurant shooting. Note it is a folding stock variant, which explains why none of the ten victims were killed. The inexperienced shooter could not control the bucking weapon and most of his shots went wild.

This morning we learn that a Kalashnikov assault rifle has been recovered from a stately home in Vancouver, and the residents of the multi-million dollar property have lawyered up. More intriguing is that this shooting is somehow related to the murder of Gurmit Singh Dhak, who was shot at Metrotown Mall in Burnaby on October 17. Dhak was sitting in an SUV with his wife and daughter, neither of who were hit when the shooter emptied his whole clip through the windshield.
The NATIONAL POST, which has many subscribers here in Vancouver, provided this graphic in today's edition. The detail provided for the BEST NEIGHBOURS RESTAURANT crime site more than satisfies my curiosity.

As I mentioned in a previous Blog article, the crime graphics used by the VANCOUVER SUN suck, blurring rather than revealing information. So it was refreshing to find a very helpful graphic of our Vancouver mass-shooting, in a Toronto based newspaper. I think I'll start checking the NATIONAL POST website for continued coverage of gangland shootings here in Vancouver. The most startling thing I read were comments of Deputy Chief Warren Lemke, who suggested that because "the bulk of the people", (ie. the ten who were shot), have known gang affiliations, "no innocent people ... were struck by bullets". Wow !!! Now if we can just get the mealy mouthed media to stop referring to shooters as "alleged gangsters" UNTIL they are convicted in court, then boys and girls, we will really have made progress. For my money, if a women dates or marries a gangster it shouldn't add her to the target list.


Comments attributed to Deputy Chief Lemke and to Gregor Robertson, Mayor of Vancouver. Robertson forgets that when a man is scooping a municipal executive salary and the pension points... the whole damned city is supposed to be his neighborhood.

Retribution for the execution style killing of a gangster in front of SEARS at Burnaby's Metrotown Mall is alleged to be a contributing factor in the weekend attack on a birthday part in Vancouver - ten hit by a vengeful shooter.

CBC News traffics in illicit U.S. documents, and not a peep from the U.S. Embassy

Well, well.... Tom Flanagan has apologized for his outburst on a CBC News panel discussion. He admits he's still pissed off at Julian Assange, but he doesn't really want him dead. It sounds like the mea culpa hastily offered by the Muslim clerics who put out a hit on film director Theo van Gogh in 2004, when he ended up literally butchered in downtown Amsterdam. Of course all Flanagan really wants is Assange muzzled for good. That way we get to listen to Flanagan shovel shit on CBC till the cows come home, but are denied knowledge of how the elites of this world con and manipulate the taxpayers who fund their vapid careers and plush retirements. WIKILEAKS style anarchy doesn't threaten our economic stability or U.S. national security. It destabilizes confident careerists.


Julian Assange as he appears on the banner of WIKILEAKS. Not one of the unflattering photos his detractors enjoy distributing. The site and its mirrors are under constant attack. As of today it can be accessed here: (Read Wikileaks)

Of course the majority of Canadians have never heard of WIKILEAKS and have no interest in Hilary Clinton's confidential email. What frightens the puppet masters this week is easy to see. If Mr. Assange is not turned into road kill fast, really fast, there is every likelihood that other disaffected drones with access to data-links, will dump juicier files onto the Internet.

I am not the only Canadian who has noticed that Mothercorp is having it both ways on this WIKILEAKS. Prior to last Sundays bulk release by WIKILEAKS , CBC News decided to traffic in illicit U.S. government documents. CBC set up a handy search widget so dummies like me (and Professor Tom Flanagan) could search and download U.S. State Department cables. I did and he did, but I am grateful for the free lunch from WIKILEAKS and Tommy is not.


This search widget has been featured on the main CBC News website for over a week. Many Canadians, including Tom Flanagan used it to access and download WIKILEAKS files. Why is that CBC traffics in illicit data provided by WIKILEAKS, but doesn't go to Julian Assanges defence? Why should he be in the crosshairs of public opinion while all of the pundits get to play it safe?


Wow... the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation even has the brass to claim copyright on "stolen" WIKILEAKS content. Has the American Embassy nothing to say on this matter? So what type of con is the U.S. government and the media establishment really trying to pull here?


Here are questions from a CBC viewer named DAMON which I read on the CBC News WIKILEAKS search page. He comments on what is bloody obvious - Mothercorp traffics in WIKILEAKS content, and yet one of its less inhibited panelists calls for Assange's assassination. He asks "How crazy is that?"


The point I made in an earlier Blog article is that Assange is an anarchist, but he is doing us a valuable service. For example he is helping us understand what the Chinese government is up to, and he champions the potential for China's citizens to reach out to us in spite of the firewall erected by the Communist Party. TIME magazine conducted an interview with Assange on that very subject. It's (here).

Flanagan uses CBC News as a podium; top TORY advisor to P.M. urges the assassination of Julian Assange

Pity poor cyber warrior Julian Assange. Now even Canadian academics want a piece of him! The truly exciting thing about sowing anarchy is that what you tend to reap is a lot more anarchy. A case in point was the spectacle of an upper echelon Tory advisor, live on the CBC News channel counselling the Americans to murder WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange with a cruise missile. One major newspaper, the JERUSALEM POST made his ugly outburst their top story this morning, although they got Tom Flanagan's name wrong.

Tom Flanagan, a top advisor to TORY Prime Minister Stephen Harper, thinks Julian Assange, the Australian founder of WIKILEAKS should be assassinated. This is a screen capture made this morning of the story posted on the JERUSALEM POST website.

The clip of Flanagan venting on CBC News World is available on You Tube and it seems like Canadians all want to see what he had to say. (Here) It's had 117,000 plays today. Incredible! What I found really amusing is that in almost the same breath of air used to denounce Assange, the Calgary based professor admitted he had read the files and found them titillating. As I mentioned in my previous article, an enormous number of Canadians were waiting to pounce on the U.S. State Department files when they appeared on Sunday, but as soon as they didn't find anything to suit their taste, they all turned on the messenger and started bitching. Flanagan happens to be just one of the those ungrateful bastards. Take a pill will ya! The world is not going to stop spinning just because of the leak of these State Department cables. Anyone who pays attention knows that the Chinese are a bigger threat to U.S. commercial, diplomatic, and military communications than WIKILEAKS could ever dream of becoming. When Mr. Flanagan opened his GLOBE & MAIL on November 18th and read that China had tapped the secure flow of Internet traffic for over a quarter of an hour, and downloaded the lot, he didn't council the Yanks to launch a strike at a Chinese data centre. Of course not.

The Chinese have been harvesting higher grade traffic... U.S. military traffic. In fact the Chinese in 2008 pulled a WIKILEAK type stunt of their own - teasing the Americans with a electronic shot across the bow of the U.S. Navy. Seymour Hersh told the incredible story in an article published in the NEW YORKER on November 1. The Chinese, he wrote, had broken secret U.S. naval codes and for several years had been "reading" everything. "A few weeks after Barack Obama's election, the Chinese began flooding a group of communications links known to be monitored by the N.S.A. with a barrage of intercepts... . The intercepts included details of planned American naval movements. The Chinese were apparently showing the U.S. their hand." What if the Chinese choose to share their NAVAL harvest with WIKILEAKS? What if they already have? The horror! The horror!

Seymour Hersh revealed how the Chinese military pulled a WIKILEAKS type stunt of their own. They fed the American N.S.A. a big dose of decrypted U.S. naval communcations. Would Prof. Flanagan recommend the White authorize a strike against Chinese military hackers? Read the entire NEW YORKER article here. Flanagan clearly hasn't.

The problem with Mr. Flanagan is simple. Because he's a buddy of the P.M. and has a security clearence, he believes he's well informed. However, having a head full of TORY gossip is far from a healthy view of the world. Julian Assange and the WIKILEAKS furor is a convenient scapegoat for a corrupted political elite which never did and never will, allow its secrets to be exposed.

WIKILEAKS - Canadians let down by first batch of U.S. Diplomatic files

The publication by WIKILEAKS of that first batch of U.S. Diplomatic files occurred on Sunday. Anticipation in Canada had been very keen, and our two major television news channels - CBC and CTV were giving hourly updates throughout the weekend. The disappointment here was huge when we learned on Sunday afternoon that Hilary and her State Department hirelings rarely discuss us. One columnist, contributing to the online magazine BACK OF THE BOOK drove the nail through the board when he sniffed that the docs are dull because "none feature the American ambassador calling Jean Chretien or Stephen Harper a douche bag, or anything else likely to titillate Ottawa." WIKILEAK cache slim on Canadian content, so far. Just before midnight on Sunday I checked the CBC News poll which asked the question "Should Wikileaks publish sensitive U.S. diplomatic files?" A whopping 84 per cent said YES? Does this suggest that Canucks have an appetite for the BIG issues of the day? Not a chance! The YAHOO news ticker recorded that the death of the ancient actor Leslie Neilson generated more stories here than did the WIKILEAKS document dump.
CBC News polled Canadians on the immanent release by WIKILEAKS of secret U.S. State Department cables. This screen shot was made at 11:45 PM November 28. There had been 64,995 unique votes [no multiple voting] and 84% were in favour of Internet publication.

So what did we learn from the Sunday document dumping? Well those of us who care about the machination's of the Fascist government in Beijing, learned a few things about China's illicit support for Iran's nuclear missile program. (A sampling of documents below). In February of 2010 Hilary Clinton's department sent warnings to the Chinese government that it was monitoring Chinese sales of critical components, such as missile gyroscopes. One of the offending firms named in the cable is "Hong Kong 4 Star Electronics Ltd." which is the H.K. registry of a Chinese company, 4 Star Electronics Ltd., located two hours from Shanghai. Another Chinese company named is "VibTel Industrial Co. Inc." A report commenting on what the cables indicate the Chinese are doing, written by CNN's David de Sola is here, with video. Since WIKILEAKS in under heavy attack today, and you cannot get through, I am posting the documents quoted by CNN:
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These two messages, SECSTATE, WASH D.C. to AMEMBASSY, BEIJING and AMEMBASSY MOSCOW are both dated February 2010. They detail the web of companies and nations involved (Russia, China and Malaysia) in providing Iran with the missiles it needs to throw a nuclear weapon and "rain fire down upon the Israeli Satan". Now that WIKILEAKS has revealed that virtually every nation in the region wishes the U.S.A. to destroy Iran's nuclear program, the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia should cooperate and get the job done.
These documents show how the U.S. and China play the game. The U.S. informs Beijing that another illicit sale of war material has been detected, and requests that the regime investigate itself. Beijing responds coyly with a request for more information.
A photo of the latest generation of surface to surface missile being deployed in Iran. The Persians are getting perilously close to being capable of making good on their threat to annihilate the State of Israel and all of its citizens.

I noticed that Sunday's dumping of documents by WIKILEAKS included a packet from the U.S. Consulate in Vancouver. I am planning to go through those soon. Who knows, maybe something juicy worth sharing here.

A BROAD STRATA OF SOCIETY - We're all terrorists!

I love this. We are all now so sensitive to Muslim sensitivities, that journos even strain to get the spelling correct when quoting the terrorist war cry - "Allahu akbar!" Back in the day it was rendered simply "Allah akbar". He's got a catchy name too - Mohamed O. Mohamud.

In response to yesterday's bulletins about Mohamed O. Mohamud, the so-called "Christmas Tree bomber" in Portland, Oregon, MICHELLE MALKIN today offers a pungent assemblage of something we in Vancouver rarely get to see... the mug shots of the Bad Boys and Bad Girls who commit heinous acts. In the criminal matter at hand, the perfunctory profile of those who seem committed to perpetrating large scale acts of terror in the U.S.A., Michelle plays with the irony of it all. EVERYBODY is surveilled, EVERYBODY is body scanned, EVERYBODY is a suspect until the real Muhammad or Muhammadine detonates, or impacts or immolates.


Way back in June of 2006 Ms. Malkin picked up on the squeamishness of Canada's RCMP who used the term BROAD STRATA OF SOCIETY to describe the composition of a terror cell. The Mounties always talk funny. They often call the criminal under arrest a "gentleman" and often refer to themselves as "members"... as in "The gentleman had his girlfriend's severed head in his hands when he was confronted and taken into custody by one of our members."
... A gallery of members of the 9/11 strike team who knocked out New York's Twin Towers + 1, levelled a wing of the Pentagon, but failed to destroy Mr. Bush's White House. This is NOT an official Law Enforcement poster. It is satire, and credit for this display of wry humour goes to Photoshop artiste David Lunde.

Ms. Malkin offers some interesting commentary on the now infamous "Broad Strata of Society", who are persistently trying to defeat U.S. Homeland Security. Check out her Nov. 27th article and updated rogue's gallery.

The War in Afghanistan - Let's Cut the Crap, Shall We?

A police constable from Milton, Ontario allows an Afghan police trainee to admire a Canadian manufactured assault rifle. Mr. Harper has decided to extend "the Mission" past 2011, but he assures us Canadian personnel will only be ...heh, heh, training the Afghanis. No more combat pay for the Mounties. No more risk of suicides in barracks and lawyers engorging themselves on PTSD claims.

James Fergusson recently put his balls in the cross-hairs of the Americans who control the orbiting PREDATOR and REAPER drone aircraft which target and eliminate Taliban guerrillas. He visited Chak, a town "just 40 miles" southwest of Kabul which is garrisoned, taxed and administered by the Taliban - less than an hour jeep drive to where Canadians have been training the other Afghanis to march and salute their national flag. In his exclusive report published in the British newspaper THE INDEPENDENT he has plenty to reveal and it will only take five minutes of your time to read. My favorite anecdote records the personal best of a Taliban commander who destroyed 81 NATO gasoline tanker trucks in a single night ambush.

The Chinese are plenty busy in Afghanistan.... busy scooping up the rights to natural resources. Selling small arms ammunition, grenades and unguided rockets to the Taliban is just a sideline for Beijing. The real money is in metals and minerals. The Associated Press has an interesting story this week of an ancient site which archaeologists are rushing to excavate, because its sitting on six million tons of copper, and the Chinese have the exclusive right to scoop and run. It will only take you another five minutes to read CHINESE MINE IN AFGHANISTAN . Mes Aynak is only 20 miles south of Kabul. The Afghani National government has deployed 1,500 police to guard the Chinese mine site, as heavy equipment is starting to arrive. That is 1,500 cops trained at the $$ expense of Canadian taxpayers, folks. A regiment of cops has been mobilized to protect a Chinese government investment in strategic metals. Why, you may wonder, don't the Chinese deploy their own security force in Mes Aynak, as many Western resource companies do worldwide? Why should we Canadian taxpayers train, arm and fund the weekly payroll for the security zone around the Chinese mine? Because we are suckers, and always have been. The Copper King and the Crocodile. 1,500 Afghan police are deployed to patrol a security zone around a single Chinese mine site in Afghanistan.

Ottawa dubs KABUL "a calmer area" - and silly media parrots the sticky ministerial handout.

Canadian reporters are desperately scrambling to fall into step with the latest iteration of a Tory Afghanistan policy. The snippet exhibited in yellow above, is taken from a CBC web site. (The story is developing so fast today, that a link is worthless here.) Mr. Harper's plan for an orderly retreat is shredded.... literally. Establishment historians (UC and UT careerists) - thirty years from now, will find that very sensitive file heavily "weeded". Mr. Harper has decided to employ a variant of America's early Vietnam War strategy, which saw the American MACV posturing as an advisory force, but in actuality "kicking Charlie's ass" when the CBS camera boys were not looking. Yesterday a Harper henchman, termed "an official spokesman" by gullible reporters, was sucking and blowing about the new "Mission" plan - to reduce the Canadian Expeditionary Force to 950 uniformed bodies - 750 cops, and 200 clerk typists, cooks, etc. I guess that means the "iconic" Tim Horton trailer and coffee mama's will have to fall back to Kabul.

Colonel Geoff Parker was blown up in Kabul earlier this year. Not only was he Canada's highest ranking officer killed by Afghan guerrillas, he was Canada's 145th death in this WAR. How much armour will we transfer from Kandahar to Kabul to protect the "training" mission? No fricking way is Renfrew of the Mounted going to sport around a kill zone like Kabul in a Toyota RAV.

So let's get this straight... when our boys were getting their asses chewed off a few years back, the public was, with good reason, outraged. So to reduce the mauling, our government placed a RUSH order (cost plus bribes) for South African armoured vehicles, and hired Ukrainian Antonov aircraft to lift our Leopard tanks into A-Stan, for a whopping $$$1,000,000 per flight - so that "our troops have everything they need to get the mission done". Now we are pulling out the infantry, the armour and the drones... and we are going to leave our boys and girls naked in Indian country???!!! Not a fricking chance. Mr. Harper, you can lie to your Tory Faithful but don't lie to us. You are offering this stuff up out of political desperation, and the pity is we don't have a patriot like Stauffenberg joining you at the map table. Everything about this war, oops "MISSION," has been kept SECRET. The number of Canadian wounded and maimed, the number of Canadians who gave up army careers (1000 plus) rather than be sent to Afghanistan, the number of enemy we have have killed and wounded, and the true dollar cost of this, the greatest federal boondoggle.

THE U.N. GRAPHIC WHICH EMBOLDENED THE HARPER GOVERNMENT : UPDATE DEC. 27, 2010

This is the confidential UNITED NATIONS graphic which helped convince Prime Minister Steven Harper to commit nearly 1000 Canadian cops to an extended "mission" in Afghanistan. The map purports to show the national capital Kabul in a "low risk" area. As my article points out, with examples, Kabul is not a low risk zone, and some Canadians federal cops are going to be sent home in plastic bags as the "incidents" accumulated in 2011- 2013. The WALL STREET JOURNAL which published this map today, has a full explanation on why this graphic is so deceptive. - WSJ Story.

Mr. Harper Still Wants to Play War - Happy Remembrance Day!

Well ram a stick up my ass and call me a sucker! Thanks a lot Mr. Harper. I really believed you would keep your word, and pull the Canadian Forces out of Afghanistan in 2011. You are just the liar your political enemies say you are. Just a low down liar. And you compound the lie by announcing your decision during Remembrance Week! What a bastard you are. To use Remembrance Week, when we as a nation traditionally set aside our political views, to take one day to mourn our war dead... you know that the media and the political parties will stand down, loath to upset the greying Legionnaires, because this is their week. What a rotten trick. If there was ever a time RPC should rise again and kick some Tory balls, this would be it. But since the Tory Lawyers, Harper's lawyers, squat on the rights to the REFORM and "ALLIANCE" brands, that just won't happen.

Thanks a lot for humiliating us Stephen. This is the most egregious about-face since Chretien reneged on his GST promise. I was one of those citizen suckers with the SUPPORT THE TROOPS magnet on my car and wearing the YELLOW RIBBON ball cap to the shopping mall. I was a fool who engaged students and friends with positive, practiced homilies about "The MISSION," refusing to admit what it really is, a rotten, hopeless WAR. A war we sacrificed hundreds of lives and $$billions of dollars in taxes for, because you play politics, day after bloody day. You know not the concept of SHAME.

"If I die in a Combat Zone, box me up and send me home." They have not "fallen". They are obliterated. Maple wrapped, but not ready for a closeup, these Canadians died because Mr. Chretien thought he could sell A-Stan as a "Just Cause" and Mr. Harper thinks it plays well to aging Canadians who have no values at all, but like to think they do. One of Canada's best writers, Carol Shields wrote: "We cannot live without our illusions." It's too true!
For a healthy dose of reality read Canadian Forces casualties in Afghanistan on Wikipedia.


I'm giving thought to posting in the Blog photos of what obliterated Canadian soldiers look like. Ever since the C.E.F. went to France in 1915 the media have cooperated with the censors on NOT publishing photos of our dead. I think it's time that changed. We are also not allowed to see what Afghanis look like when they've been torn up by Canadian rifles, 20mm canon and claymores. That too must change. As of November 2010 A-Stan is no longer a Canadian "Mission". It is Mr. Harper's WAR. Chretien started it, but Harper owns it now. I would dislike sitting with a lying Tory constituency organization in the run up to the next Federal election. I wouldn't want to be saddled with selling Stephen's shit. It is has taken one titanic Tory lie to convert me to the anti-war movement. We can best support our troops by repudiating the scoundrel in Ottawa, and supporting any candidate but a Tory.

These four middle aged Afghan women were stuffed into army uniform and assembled for a "Photo OP" in Kabul, Sept. 23, 2010. Notice the NATO soldier in the background. HER embarrassment is so excruciating she turns her face away from the camera. Notice the masks carved into the wooden wall. The photographer who composed this photo has a great sense of the ironic.

The face of the Afghanistan guerrilla. This man will fight until he is dead or crippled. He does not waste time comparing his combat pay to regular wages. He doesn't lose sleep over the fact that he will never receive medals or a monthly pension. He hates the NATO invader and will kill him, or his sons will pick up the Kalashnikov and finish the job for him. He has many friends, including the Chinese, the Pakistanis and the Iranians. He is never alone in his beliefs and he is not on a "Mission" governed by strict "rules of engagement". He is a warrior fighting for what he values. He has already won.

Now I will post this unhappy piece and go to the TV to watch the memorial service at 11AM.

Dogs of War - improvements to early 21st Century Lethality

DOGS OF WAR - a British S.A.S. NCO in England (face digitally masked) demonstrates a HALO descent with special trained camera dog. The dog is trained to run into Taliban bunkers and ambush points to sweep their position with a head mounted video camera. Officially eight dogs have been shot and killed by Taliban irregulars but the attrition rate of on the dogs is probably higher.

A fascinating story in THE GUARDIAN today. All the scrapers are copying and pasting it to their own sites, but you can read the original story (here) HALO jumping (High Altitude Low Opening) is a technique used predominantly in special operations for inserting spies, saboteurs or elite combat teams into hostile territory. Is there any part of Afghanistan that isn't hostile?

The Austrian version of dog insertion by HALO drop. The dog is of course on pressurized oxygen and is also given a thermal vest to prevent its core temperature from falling. There is not doubt that Canada has been sharing in the dog/man HALO experiment, but we will not be informed lest it become a domestic political issue.

Now for you Gameheads who found this Blog article by keyword searching "HALO," the video game. Here is an amusing photo I scraped. Source unknown.

VANCOUVER RECORDS IT'S FIRST CRYONIC SUSPENSION "PATIENT" - July 2010 - Mother frozen in hospital and shipped to Cryonic Suspension facility

Canada's governments have a long history of blocking debate on Cryonic Suspension - the freezing of whole bodies or heads of people who hope for resuscitation in the distant future. Our only exposure to the concept is Hollywood movies and the popular cartoon series FUTURAMA. The permafrost of Canadian public opinion (cheered on by Funeral Industry lobbyists) have prevented a few well intentioned Cryonics Societies from taking root and thriving here. Why so many years of mocking these groups?
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Cryonics have been satirized in this country for decades. Humour columnist Gary Lautens of the Toronto Star set the tone way back in 1964 when he advised prospective volunteers for Cryogenic suspension "Let me know if the light really goes out when you close the refrigerator door, eh?" Then an urban myth arose in 1967 claiming that Walt Disney had been "frozen". Not true, but the mockery grew intense. If memory serves, even CBC comedians Wayne and Shuster got in on the act. Funeral Directors nationwide enjoyed the joke. Well the real story today is that a few Canadian believers in the concept are refusing to be thwarted.

Vancouver Milestone - B.C.'s First Cryonic Suspension patient- July 9, 2010
At 1:30 AM July 3rd a Vancouver woman was found slumped in front of a PC. Perhaps she was surfing the Net as we all do late at night. Her husband phoned 911 and she was rushed to the Emergency at a nearby hospital. At 12 Noon she was moved to the ICU and given a brain scan. At 6:30 PM a physician pronounced her dead... and that ending was the start of a new life. The life of a long term cryonic "patient".

The quoted price was US$28,000, with an initial deposit of US$1250 required to set complex procedures in motion. This unplanned case (the family has never been a member of any Cryonic Society) was an imposition on the American Cryo-support team because they had to assemble on the July 4th long weekend holiday. The Vancouver family paid the initial deposit with a PayPal account and engaged the services of a cooperative Funeral Director. (The Funeral Industry is very hostile to the whole concept of cryonics.) The balance of the $28,000 fee was paid by bank transfer.

The patient's son, accompanied by the Funeral Director, were waiting in a room adjacent to the ICU until hospital staff declared his Mom legally dead. They rolled in a temporary coffin containing almost 80 pounds of dry ice, and removed her from the hospital. A few hours later she was sealed inside four body bags, each inside the next, and transferred to a sheet metal box. An additional 120 pounds of dry ice was added. The metal box was nested with thick Styrofoam sheeting inside an outer case made from West Fraser Plywood. The lady was stored until the Funeral Director could get the necessary paperwork from the U.S. Consulate. Properly sealed with a Customs declaration the coffin was transported to YVR on July 7 and loaded aboard a Delta Airlines flight to Detroit on July 8. The patient was entrusted to perpetual care in the U.S. because there is no service offered anywhere in Canada. Cryonic Suspension is outlawed here and all the Law permits is the transfer of a loved one to a foreign storage facility. Technical details on the suspension process can be read at the Cryonics Institute website. They trumpet this case as their "98th patient".
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This is the Cryogenic storage facility in the Michigan where British Columbia's first Cryogenic storage patient is resting. MRS. X died on July 3, 2010 in a Vancouver I.C.U. and was flown to Detroit on July 8. Her son arrived at the facility on July 9 and witnessed the two day produre as his mother was cooled and finally frozen for perpetual storage. The procedure cost - US$ 28,000.

Vancouver Cryonic Milestone -The transfer completed, the staff of the Cryogenic support team display the empty transfer case, custom built to Cryogenic standards, by a Vancouver Funeral Director. Note the Yellow label "HUMAN REMAINS" and "YVR".

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Vancouver Cryonic Milestone - A Cryonic Institute staff member displays the transfer case, shipped from YVR Vancouver, B.C. The patient's body was carefully preserved in 200 pounds of dry ice, resting inside four rubber body bags, a sheet metal coffin, Styroifoam and a plywood outer case.
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The CREMATION, INTERMENT AND FUNERAL SERVICES ACT (2004) outlaws the selling or even promotion of Cryonic services in this British Columbia. A local funeral business will be prosecuted if it even displays brochures on the premises. The ACT can be read here.
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The only advocacy for Cryonic services in Canada is undertaken by the few societies which exist here. The largest group meets in Toronto. Here in British Columbia the concept is totally thwarted and the Funeral Industry is ever vigilant. From time to time elected officials issue "Comfort Letters" to assure Cryonics advocates that their government is not picking on them. Here is an example signed by Minister Rich Coleman in 2002.
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POURING PEOPLE DOWN THE SEWER - COMING SOON TO "ECO-FRIENDLY" CITIES... PERHAPS YOURS

I have examined plenty of ghastly imagery in my time ... "horrors of war" footage, targets of assassinations, monstrous mutilations of clan enemies, and charred chunks of suicide bombers. All of it is repugnant and reprehensible. My reaction to atrocity is often sadness or outrage but even natural carnage becomes objectionable when men fail to show compassion. That was certainly the case when a series of photos which showed me bodies of Haitian earthquake victims being hauled to a landfill mixed with building rubble. Bucket loaders had scooped up corpses and concrete and poured them into dump trucks with no attempt to offer a moment of dignity for the dead, most of whom must have been very spiritual in life.

I had similar feelings of outrage last week as I read a story in the DAILY MAIL about growing interest in a chemical reduction process to get rid of human remains - a gruesome process known as RESOMATION. The cynical attempt of some to sell this outrage as an an "eco-friendly," progressive service to the public, is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who still has a caring bone left in their body. I haven't been this disturbed about callous trends in the Funeral Industry since my first reading of "Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain," extracted from Jessica Mitford's investigative book THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH.

You can read the entire DAILY MAIL article (here) or you can settle for all the "Who cares anyway!" responses to the piece which arose next day. Just tickle Uncle Google with a few key strokes and he'll point you to them.

Three grinning funeral "Directors" demonstrate an American version of a Resomation system. I would imagine their first exports will be to Mexican drug cartels, some of which are already know to dissolve their opponents in 45 gallon drums.

A human volunteer lays his body in stainless steel RESOMATION tank which will reduce his body to a bucket of sludge in less than two hours. Unlike the ceramic bathtub destroyed when it was used to dissolve a rival drug dealer's corpse in an episode of BREAKING BAD, this engineered process is guaranteed to destroy thousands of bodies maintenance free.

This bucket holds the sludge recovered after dissolving two large pigs. Dissolving a human being produces half as much sludge, but more guilt than any of us should be willing to bear.
You can watch a slide show of the process demonstrated (here). No, the company is not a subsidiary of I.G. Farbenindustrie. It's a proud American firm named CYCLEDLIFE.


THE FUNERAL INDUSTRY FLIES UNDER JUDICIAL RADAR

CANADIAN CRIMINAL CODE - "Dead Body"
"Section 182 (b) Every one who improperly or indecently interferes with or offers any indignity to a dead human body or human remains, whether buried or not, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years. R.S., c. C-34, s. 178."

This section of Canada's Criminal Code usually gets trotted out when gang bangers or other outlaws burn or scatter the bodies of people they've murdered. It's about time it was amended to deal with "Resomation" and other processes which may be concocted to make people vanish without trace, as they do in George Orwell's allegory of a world where living memory, identity and history disappear.

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Too many people seem to have come to the conclusion that life has no purpose or meaning. They are not burdened with a sense of responsibility, they feel no loyalty to a community, they have no personal goals, romance is a humbug, Art does not move them, reading is a bore, even raw pornography doesn't stir their flesh. Sadly they chose to forgo the 1.2 children that was their due. Since they have a sneaking suspicion no one will come to their funeral anyway, cremation has become the 'send off' of choice. Almost 75% of "the departed" in Greater Vancouver are now disposed of in the crematoriums. East Asian families are now permitted to burn their dead on an open air pyre located beside the Fraser River.

I have a passion for the past and I often share news of fresh archaeological discoveries with my son. We agree that human remains should be treated with dignity and respect. Always. When we examine the burial practices of past cultures we notice an emphasis on something of the eternal in the human spirit. Love, for instance, is an expression of the eternal and a recognition that we are not simply clever animals residing at the top of a food chain. When for instance we find human remains which have been carefully interred in a fashion which documents love in perpetuity (as below) we have to question our own resolve to do what is fitting and proper. "Would I do any less for those I love?"

The B.C. Government will punish any property owner who discovers aboriginal remains and fails to accord those remains their lawful due. It is very strange that respect for our own dead continues to erode and that we may reach a point where traditional burial and the provision for perpetual care disappears from our culture.

Although the family relationship of these adolescent remains are in dispute - a brother/sister, or a bonded couple, there is no denying the fact that their burial ceremonial was invested with a degree of love and loyalty that is rarely matched in our own time. I am overjoyed that their bodies were not left exposed to the jackals or the vultures, because their embrace is a promise that something of human existence, and our individual lives, is eternal. We can count on it.

The Final Word: My thanks to Sandy Chang, a student in Burnaby, B.C. who drew my attention to a Japanese book called THE CATALOGUE OF DEATH which includes a section on plans or current practices for disposing of the unwanted dead. This illustration (from the Taiwan edition of the book) shows how Swedes are getting the job done. The human sludge is not washed down the drain but instead used for garden fertilizer. I like how the machine has an earth friendly" recyle" logo.